Not long before our Antarctic trip about 10 weeks ago, I bought myself a waterproof expedition grade backpack: the LowePro DryZone 100 through the Kamera Express Super Store in Rotterdam.
It is a great bag, and the DryZone works really well, provided you lubricated the TIZIP watertight zipper before you use the bag a couple of times, and keep doing that regularly.
The little piece of paper that guides you through it is not that well written, but luckily there are a few on-line guides how to do this properly.
Make sure you always close the TIZIP zipper to the end, that is the only way it will be completely watertight.
There are many reviews of this bag (for instance here and here), so I will keep it short:
- It is watertight
- Carrying it by hand and on your back for a full day is a breeze, even when it is completely full
- Grabbing your stuff is a bit time consuming: opening the TIZIP takes a while
- It fits an awful lot of equipment
- It won’t tip over when you put on the ground in the upright position
My recommendation is to buy the yellow/black color combination, not the grey/black color combination.
Yellow is easier to find when you drop it in the water.
Though on our antarctic trip, anything other than white was easy to find :)
This is what Nikon stuff I took to the Antarctic in this bag:
- D700 body with MB-D10 grip/battery pack and 16-35mm f/4 VR lens
- D300 body with MB-D10 grip/battery pack and 18-200mm VR lens
- 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR
- 70-200mm f/2.8 ED IF VR G AF-S (yeah, I know, there is a VR II now, see the 80-200 history)
- 50mm f/1.8 D
- SB-900 flash with diffuser and sets of spare batteries
- a few spare EN-EL3e batteries, filters, a Easytag wired GPS module, etc
(Thanks Ken Rockwell for all the nice reviews of all these bodies and lenses.
Yes I know there are better lenses and better bodies, and an easier Easytag bluetooth GPS module that pairs with receivers on multiple cameras, but this is what I wanted to afford when I bought them piece by piece).
At the time I bought the DZ100 backpack, you could not get the DZ200 in The Netherlands. The DZ200 is about 30% bigger (volume wise).
–jeroen
via: An expedition camera backpack, the LowePro DZ100 « Stephen’s Stuff.
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